Mia tore her eyes off the fallen soldier and spun to see the android adjusting his aim just as the other soldier grabbed her and pushed her down against the wall while taking aim with his other hand. Several shots burst out of the android’s gun and bit loudly into the wall by Mia, spitting out shards of stone that cut into the ground around her. The soldier next to her let off a few rounds that must have missed, as she saw the android fire off a couple of more shots before doubling back and disappearing down the alley.
The soldier sprang to his feet and rushed to his fallen partner. Mia willed herself off the ground and staggered over to join him. The sight made her stomach lurch. The wounded soldier seemed dead. His face was splattered with blood, his eyes blankly staring into nothing. The surviving soldier spat out some angry words before gesturing to Mia to stay put and rushing off after the android. Mia stared at him blankly and took another look at the bloodied corpse on the ground. Still dumbstruck and in shock, she wasn’t going to stay behind on her own. She stumbled off after him.
She heard a screech of tires as she entered the alley. The soldier was about ten yards ahead of her, his gun raised, but he didn’t stand a chance. The BMW was already bearing down on him. He loosed off a couple of wild shots before the big car ploughed into him, flicking him over its hood like a rag doll. He spun in the air and crashed into its windshield, spiderwebbing it before bouncing heavily onto the car’s roof and trunk and landing with a dull thud on the ground.
She was next.
She ducked behind the wall just as the BMW burst out of the alley. Its bumper clipped the corner of the wall inches from Mia in a thunderous explosion of steel and stone, then the car swerved right and charged off towards the mosque. As it rushed past, Mia caught a glimpse of the men in the car, the android and the driver in front, her mother crammed in between the two thugs in the backseat.
There was no sign of Evelyn’s companion.
Mia stumbled out from behind the wall. The street was deathly quiet again, as if nothing had happened. She didn’t know where to turn. She spotted the second soldier, lying down the alley from her. Beyond him, she saw her mom’s handbag, its contents strewn on the ground around it, and, a bit further away, a lone shoe of hers. Mia made her way over to the soldier, suddenly aware that her whole body was violently shaking. He lay there, on the ground, contorted in unnatural bends, a rivulet of blood snaking out of the corner of his mouth. He looked at her with pained eyes and blinked.
Her legs collapsed from under her, and she knelt down beside him and cried.
Chapter 9
The next hour or two went by in a blur.
Sitting in an austere interview room in the Hobeish police station on Rue Bliss, Mia felt sick to her stomach. It didn’t help that the room, with its bare concrete-block walls, was cold and damp. She was shivering intensely, though that was probably more from the shock and the fear.
She tried to remain focused on the only thing that really mattered right now: getting her mom back. But she wasn’t sure the two detectives sitting across the table from her or the agitated cops darting confusingly in and out of the room were getting the message.
She’d left the bloodied soldier and blundered zombielike down to the main road at the end of the alley and just stood there, tears streaming down her face, facing the oncoming traffic with her arms up. Something about the haunted look on her face must have connected with the people driving by, as one car after another soon stopped to help. Before long, the cavalry appeared in the form of several Durangos filled with armed Fuhud policemen, a kind of paramilitary überforce. The quiet backstreet quickly morphed into a noisy, chaotic zoo. The soldier who’d been shot was already dead. The one who’d been rammed by the car was still hanging on, and an ambulance soon arrived and took him away. Evelyn’s handbag and her shoe were retrieved. Mia was questioned and shuffled from one cop to another — she tried to explain about her mom forgetting her phone and handed it over to them along with her own, that last request slightly unsettling her — before she was eventually packed into one of their jeeps and whisked off to the station under armed guard.
She shifted in the cold, metallic chair and took a small sip from a bottle of water someone had brought in for her. “Please,” she murmured. Her throat felt as if it had been rubbed down with sandpaper. Her desperate screams still rang in her ears. She swallowed and tried again. “Listen to me. You have to find her. They took her. You have to do something before it’s too late.”
One of the detectives facing her nodded and answered her in broken English, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, just more of the same evasive and condescending platitudes. More worrisome, his partner, a wiry, ferretlike man who had quietly been rifling through her mom’s handbag and spreading its contents on the table, now seemed to be keenly interested in some pictures that he’d found in a brown envelope in the bag. As he studied them, he glanced up at Mia with a look she didn’t really like. He nudged his taller colleague and showed him the photographs. Mia couldn’t understand what the men were saying — she couldn’t even see what was in the photos — but the suspicious glances were now coming her way from both men.
Her shivering was cutting deeper than before.
The two detectives discussed something among themselves and seemed to be in agreement on their next step. The ferret collected Evelyn’s things and stowed them back into her handbag, while his platitude-spouting friend gestured to Mia to stay put, explaining to her as best he could that they’d be back shortly. Her reactions were still running on a slight time delay, and before she could really object or question what they were concerned about, they were already heading out of the room. After they shut the door, she heard a key turning in the lock before it clicked ominously.
Great.
She slumped in her chair and shut her eyes, hoping she could blink the nightmare away and start her day over.
An hour later, the two detectives were facing her across the table again, only they were now joined by a pug of a man in a gray suit, no tie, and an annoyed expression wrinkled across his pink-pale face that indicated he’d been dragged from the solitary comfort of his home. Her mind was a bit clearer now — she’d been offered a cup of Turkish coffee, a thick, syrupy local specialty that had taken some getting used to, but that she’d grown to like over the last few weeks — and she’d perked up when her new visitor had introduced himself as John Baumhoff and informed her that he was with the American embassy.
The conversation that followed was far less promising.
Baumhoff tapped his fingers on the Polaroids, which he’d laid out across the table for her to see. “So you’re saying you know nothing about these?” he asked her again, in a voice that was a touch too high-pitched for his gender.
Mia sighed and made a concerted effort to calm herself. “I’ve told you what happened. I don’t know anything about these things, these relics, whatever they are. We were having a drink. She forgot her phone. I thought she was being followed. I tried to warn her. These men stuffed her into their car and took her away—”